Mussels in White Wine Bacon & Cream

One of the things I miss the most from Perth since I've been living in Sydney, is the lack of restaurants that serve mussels. In Perth, most Italian restaurants have it on their menu permanently, with tomato based chilli mussels being the most popular. Since I was at the fish market today picking up some scallops, I saw some pre-packaged fresh mussels (which states that its been cleaned and debearded) for $6.99 a kilo. I've never used packaged mussels before. For $6.99 .. I thought ... well why not ??

They tasted the same as the last time when I had used fresh mussels, in fact I think I had less mussels left over that didn't open properly. And lets not forget the fact that I didn't have to spend 30mins++ over the sink scrubbing barnacles off the shells and debearding the mussels.

Mussels in White Wine with Bacon & Cream

• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 4 cloves garlic (mashed)
• 1 onion (sliced thinly)
• 2 slices bacon (sliced about 1cm wide)
• 1/2 teaspoon of thyme
• Salt & Pepper
• 1 cup of white wine
• 1kg black mussels (scrubbed, debearded)
• 150ml cream
• 2 green onions (sliced)
• juice of 1 small lemon

Heat olive oil in a wok then melt the butter in the oil. Add garlic, onions then the sliced bacon to the wok. Saute until the onions start to soften. Add thyme and season well with freshly grounded salt & pepper. Pour in the white wine and let it simmer for about 3-5mins to boil off the alcohol and to reduce the liquid.

Add in washed mussels. And cover the wok with a lid and let the mussels steam on medium-low heat for about 3 minutes.

Once the mussels start to open, take the lid off and pour in the cream and green onions, then continue to stir the contents around and let the sauce cover the mussels. Squeeze the juice of 1 lemon over the mussels, give it a couple of stirs to make sure everything is combined then serve immediately with some bread to soak up all the broth. :)